


Childlike

by Tamyrlin



Category: The Dresden Files - Jim Butcher
Genre: Alcohol, Gen, Panic Attacks, Post-Blood Rites, Pre-Dead Beat, Real familial bonding hours, Thomas is trying his best, harry is exhausted
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-03
Updated: 2018-02-03
Packaged: 2019-03-12 22:46:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13557198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tamyrlin/pseuds/Tamyrlin
Summary: Harry's having trouble dealing. Thomas does his best to help. They don't talk about it. They don't have to.





	Childlike

I tilted my head to the side and winced at the sharp cracking sounds my neck made. Empty night, I was exhausted. I was walking back from work to the apartment Harry and I shared at three AM, and yes, before you say anything, I’m aware that walking the streets of Chicago alone at three in the morning is a stupid decision. Those are the kinds of stupid decisions you’re allowed to make when you’re a soul devouring incubus of the White Court. Everything has its silver lining. That’s me. Mr. Brightside.

I’d just started a job as a night watchman for a storage facility in town a week before, and while the hours were something like hell, the pay was decent, and my contact with other people was minimal. It was ideal, at least for the meantime. Eventually, I’d have to do better, but for the time being? Well, I certainly could’ve done worse.

Astonishingly, I’d managed to make it home without incident, although that may have had something to do with the security uniform I still wore, complete with gun holster. It was empty of course, but you couldn’t tell that from a distance. Home. I wasn’t sure when I’d started referring to Harry’s apartment that way. It probably wasn’t a good thing. I didn’t want to live with Harry any longer than I absolutely had to.

It wasn’t that I disliked living with him. On the contrary, I’d been happier in the last year, living with Harry, than I had been in all recent memory, but it was a small apartment, tiny really, and I’m not exactly the easiest person to live with. On top of that, with the war on, it was downright dangerous having me around. If anyone from the White Council came by and found Harry granting asylum to a white court vampire, he’d be in serious trouble, like, the kind of trouble that can get a man killed. No. This was temporary, and I had to remind myself of that whenever I could.

I pulled the crystal Harry had given me to disarm his wards out from under my shirt. I’d been wearing it on a chain around my neck ever since the day I’d forgotten it shortly after moving in. I’d had to sit on the steps outside the apartment for four hours waiting for Harry to get back from a case and let me in. I unlocked the door, and I froze. Something was… _wrong._

 _Very keen deductive skills, Thomas,_ I thought to myself. Something they don’t tell you about being a vampire, is that your senses, while sharper than a human’s, won’t pick up the slack for you if you’re too exhausted to think straight in the first place.

The fire was lit. Harry wasn’t exactly an early bird, but unless he was burning the midnight oil in his lab, three AM was a little late for him, and he wouldn’t need the fire lit for lab work. On top of that, the air was thick with… something.

Sensing emotion is more like smelling something cooking than anything else. It’s a heavy, invisible vapor twisting through the air, clogging your mouth and nose; You could almost choke on it. Lust was easy to pick out for me. It was a rosy mist, thick as honey and sweet as wine, twisting and twirling its way through every orifice in my skull. Desire, want, even greed or envy were relatively easy for me to sniff out. They were emotions I was skilled with. I had spent years learning to identify, induce, and manipulate them, but this…

This was impossibly dense and damp and dark, and the room was absolutely filled with it. No twisting or twirling here, this pressed against my temples like iron weights, intent on slowly crushing my skull into dust. This was the endless, ever-pressing weight of the ocean on the floor of the sea. I couldn’t imagine trying to feed off of _this._ It was like trying to breathe water.

Harry was sprawled out on the floor, back resting against the couch, a tangle of awkward limbs staring blankly into the fire. He looked awful. His hair was sticking up at odd angles like he’d been running his hands through it, he sorely needed a shave, and he smelled strongly of beer. _Ah,_ I thought, _One of those nights then._

I closed the door behind me, slowly, so as not to startle him, and crossed the room to the icebox to grab one of Mac’s beers. There was one left. He’d have killed Harry if he’d known he drank them cold, but I suspected Harry had more than Mac’s brewer’s wrath on his mind at the moment. I wriggled out of my boots, took a seat on the floor next to Harry and tilted the bottle back for a long drag.

We sat like that for a long time, silently staring into the flames. I drank my beer slowly, arms resting on my knees, breathing deeply. He didn’t move. The only sign he was even alive was the shallow rise and fall of his chest. I moved to take another drink and realized I was out. I smiled bitterly and set the bottle on the layered carpet floor beside my ankle. I took a deep breath in and held it a moment, preparing. Despair had never been my forte. Not for feeding, and not for fixing. I let the breath out slowly.

“If you don’t want to talk,” I said quietly, “You don’t have to talk.” He was silent, and for a moment I thought nothing would happen, but instead he let out a long wavering breath through parted lips.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. His voice came out wet and strangled, like he hadn’t spoken in years, or maybe just like he was on the verge of tears. He drew in another shaking breath and opened his mouth to speak, but all that came out was a quiet, choked sound. He curled in on himself then, pulling his knees up and wrapping his arms around his body as if for warmth. I caught him as he leaned into me, wrapping an arm around his shoulders, and pulled his head to rest on my chest.

He sat there, on the floor, shaking in my arms like a frightened child, and I stroked his hair and rocked him slightly, whispering quiet comforts. This never would’ve happened if he’d been sober. Harry wasn’t a crier. Or a sharer. He’d made himself a shield of hammered steel. Invincible. Invulnerable. But that Harry wasn’t here tonight, Harry The Wizard, Harry The Warrior, Harry The Stalwart Crusader. Tonight, cradled in my arms, was Harry The Lost And Orphaned Child. I didn’t think he’d tell me what had happened tonight, and that was okay. It wasn’t my place to know. If he wanted to tell me, he would. For now, it was my job to be Thomas The Big Brother. The person Harry might have needed growing up, but had never had. There on the living room floor, we were just a couple of kids doing their best.

I rocked us back and forth gently, and hummed softly under my breath. It was something very old mom had sung to me as a child. Her songs had always brought me peace, even though most of them had been in Gaelic, and didn't have any words in them I could actually understand. It seemed right they should bring Harry peace, too. She’d have wanted to sing to him, if she’d had the chance. She’d always found any excuse she could to sing to me.

Lost in thought and gentle song, I hadn’t noticed Harry had drifted to sleep. I laughed softly, and closed my eyes for a moment. With a deep breath, and more than a little finagling, I looped my arm under the bend of his knees, and lifted him gently up off the floor. I carried him to his room, careful not to catch any gawky limbs on outstanding furniture, and laid him in bed as gently as I could manage. The graceful strength of my demon was certainly helpful in times like these, but my brother is just under seven feet tall, and I barely clear six feet in boots. I pulled the blankets up and over him from where they’d been bunched at the foot of his bed, and turned to go.

“Thomas?” It was barely a whisper. I turned to look at him. He lay on his side, large eyes blinking up at me sleepily in the dark. Childlike.

“Yes?” I said, “What is it Harry?” He paused and bunched his eyebrows together like as if he'd forgotten what he’d been going to say. I waited, ever the patient brother, the steady guardian.

“How do I know I'm not a monster?” Heavy silence. The words had been quiet, slurred with sleep and alcohol, but clear enough to hear. Clear enough to hurt. It took me a moment to answer. The question, whispered so quietly, so innocently in the dark, fell on my ears with a feeling akin to the surprise prick of a sewing needle. They echoed a moment in my head. I took a deep breath, and dropped slowly to a kneel by his bed. I rested my arms and chin on the edge of the mattress, and blinked back at him, slowly.

“I don’t know,” I breathed, and his eyebrows scrunched closer together. “But,” I continued, “I think no one is a monster as long as they’re afraid of becoming one.” He blinked a few times in quick succession, and seemed satisfied, the crease between his brows softening into non existence as his eyes drifted closed. I went to get some sleep myself.

\--

I was trying really hard not to burn the eggs, but I’d never had to cook for myself in my life, and even scrambled eggs presented a real challenge. Cooking oil popped up onto my thumb and I swore loudly, dropping some of the egg on the floor. As I shook my injured hand and jumped back from the stove, Harry came padding in from his bedroom.

He was smiling, clearly trying to hold back laughter at my dance of suffering. Laughing at my pain! And after all I’d done for him! I scowled in his general direction and returned my attention to the abomination in the skillet.

“I-” He stopped short of forming a sentence. I looked back and found him unraveling a thread in the hem of his t-shirt sleeve. “Um. Thanks.” His cheeks were flushed slightly. I wasn’t sure how much of the night before Harry remembered, but he was clearly uncomfortable with the level of vulnerability he’d displayed. We were brothers, and friends, but we hadn't grown up together, and we'd only known each other a few years. We had a long way to go before having a drunken panic attack in the middle of the living floor wasn't going to be a little awkward afterward.

“Whatever for, brother mine?” I smiled what I hoped was a reassuring smile. We didn't have to talk about it if he didn't want to. He returned it with a smirk and a set of thankful eyes, and I plated the eggs.

“Hell's Bells, Thomas, what have you done to these poor eggs.” He pulled a face like a kindergartner confronted with steamed spinach for the first time.

“I am become death,” I responded matter-of-factly, as though it were the obvious response. “The destroyer of worlds.” He laughed, snorting quietly. He’d never admit to the snort, but it was always there when he really laughed, just like the tiny crinkles around his eyes.

The eggs weren’t half bad.

**Author's Note:**

> #justsiblingthings Harry and Thomas never got to have together as kids. Might do more?? If I can think of anymore #justsiblingthings. My siblings and I always help each other through this shit so I thought it'd be neat to explore.
> 
> Also, the song Thomas hums can be whatever you want. Personally, I was thinking of Ar Eireann Ni Neosainn Ce Hi (or Ar Eirinn Ni Neosfainn Ce Hi).


End file.
